In January 2017, product teams were full-speed ahead on building roadmaps — and mistaking them for actual strategy. This post explores how teams often substituted feature timelines for true prioritization. Strategy was frequently hidden behind vague corporate slides or buried in documents no one read. Some teams began pushing back, tying roadmap items to customer outcomes and framing tradeoffs instead of pretending they could do everything. It wasn’t always well-received — but it shifted the co...
More teams started using OKRs and hypothesis-driven planning, tying roadmaps to outcome goals. Still, many large enterprises clung to fixed delivery models that favored predictability over learning.
By now, the distinction between roadmap and strategy is more widely recognized — but not universally practiced. High-performing teams treat roadmaps as flexible expressions of strategic intent. The rest still confuse activity with impact.
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